Re-ranking the 2007 recruiting class

By Rob DausterAug 6, 2018, 9:00 AM EDT

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July’s live recruiting period, the last of its kind, just finished up, meaning that the Class of 2019 have fully had a chance to prove themselves to the recruiters and the recruitniks around the country.

Scholarships were earned and rankings were justified over the course of those three weekends, but scholarship offers and rankings don’t always tell us who the best players in a given class will end up being.

Ask Steph Curry.

Over the course of the coming weeks, we will be re-ranking eight recruiting classes, from 2007-2014, based on what they have done throughout their post-high school career.

Here are the 25 best players from the Class of 2007, with their final Rivals Top 150 ranking in parentheses:

1. JAMES HARDEN (11)

The Beard has gone from being an incredibly productive two-year player at Arizona State to the Sixth Man of the Year as a third-year pro to the MVP of the NBA this past season. In six seasons since leaving Oklahoma City, Harden has yet to average under 25.4 points, 5.8 assists and 4.7 boards. Last season, he averaged 30.4 points. The year before that, he averaged 11.2 assists. And if it wasn’t for Chris Paul’s hamstring injury in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals — or Houston missing 27 straight threes in Game 7 — his Houston Rocket team would have been the team to dethrone Golden State.

Harden is arguably the best player in the NBA not named LeBron or Durant. Not only that, he has helped reinvent the way basketball is played in the pace-and-space era.

2. DERRICK ROSE (3)

As hard as this may be to believe, Derrick Rose does not turn 30 years old for another two months. It’s easy to forget that, at the time of his first knee injury all the way back in the 2011-12 season, he was just 23 years old, coming off of a year where he was the youngest player in NBA history to win the MVP award. The Chicago-native had led the Bulls to the No. 1 seed in the East, falling in five games to the first iteration of LeBron’s Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals.

Rose could have been one of the best to ever play the game had his body held up. He will always be one of basketball’s great ‘what-ifs?’

3. KEVIN LOVE (6)

It’s easy to forget that, before Love arrived in Cleveland, before he had to cede much of his production to play alongside LeBron and Kyrie Irving, that Love was a 25-year old three-time all-star that was coming off a season where he was named second-team all-NBA when he averaged 26.1 points, 12.5 boards and 4.4 assists. The third option on the LeBron superteams (Love and Chris Bosh) has been the one to make the biggest sacrifice, but it’s inarguable that part of the reason Cleveland could be called a superteam the last four seasons was his presence on the roster. Love has turned into something of a laughing-stock in recent seasons, but I’d guess it was worth it for that 2016 title and three other trips to the NBA Finals.

4. BLAKE GRIFFIN (23)

Griffin passed up the chance to be a top ten pick in the 2008 NBA Draft to return to school for his sophomore season, where he won the National Player of the Year award and was the first pick the following season. He missed his first year in the NBA, but since then has been one of the best power forwards in the game, adapting the way he plays to fit the modern NBA. He averaged 12.1 boards as a rookie and has won an NBA Dunk Contest, and this past season h dished out a career-high 5.8 assists per game while shooting 34.5 percent from three on more than five attempts per game.

5. ERIC GORDON (2)

Gordon has never made an all-star game, has only played more than 70 games twice in ten years and, at this point in his career, is a part-time starter for the Houston Rockets, but he’s made a lucrative career out of being a big-time scorer that can shoot the rock. Over the course of ten seasons, he’s averaged 16.7 points and shot 37.6 percent from three.

6. DEANDRE JORDON (8)

The last of a dying breed, Jordan’s career got off to a slow start — he was a second round pick that came off the bench for two seasons — but he’s since turned into a workhorse and one of the best defensive centers in the league. He’s twice led the NBA in rebounding, he’s been a first-team all-defensive player twice, first team All-NBA once and he made a killing out of being the finisher in Chris Paul pick-and-rolls. He’s also made just a single three-pointer in ten seasons. Will we ever see another DeAndre Jordan?

7. JEFF TEAGUE (57)

Since breaking into Atlanta’s starting lineup during the 2011-12 season, Teague has grown into being one of the more consistent point guards in the league. He’s only made one all-star team, but in the last six seasons, he’s never averaged less than 14.2 points and 5.9 assists.

8. CHANDLER PARSONS (19)

A series of injuries over the course of the last two seasons have turned Parsons into one of the worst contracts in the NBA. He’s owed nearly $50 million by Memphis over the next two seasons, which makes it easy to forget that, prior to signing that contract, Parsons had averaged 15.4 points, 5.2 boards and 3.2 assists while shooting 38.5 percent from three over the course of four seasons.

9. KENNETH FARIED (UR)

Age and injuries have taken their toll on Faried, as has his inability to shoot in a league that you need to be able to shoot, but there was a five-year stretch where the Morehead State product averaged double-figures and better than eight rebounds a night. He was a starter and a useful piece on a playoff team. Not bad for a player who only had one offer coming out of Newark.

10. MICHAEL BEASLEY (1)

Beasley has had such a fascinating career. After putting up gargantuan numbers in one season at Kansas State, many expected him to develop into a star in the NBA. That didn’t happen, although he did average 19.2 points during his second season in the league. That said, he is now in year 11 as an NBA player, coming off a season where he played 74 games and averaged 13.2 points for the Knicks and heading out to LA to team up with LeBron. Throw in career earnings that will top $40 million by the end of this season, and all-in-all, things could have been much worse for Super Cool Beas.

11. JAMES JOHNSON (62)

Along with being the one guy in the NBA that you should never, ever get in a fight with, Johnson has managed to carve out a ten-year career for himself. He bounced around the NBA for the first five years of his career before finding a role in Toronto in 2014. He’s had the two-best seasons of his career in the last two years in Miami, including this past season, where he averaged 10.8 points, 4.9 boards and 3.8 assists.

12. EVAN TURNER (49)

Turner had a three-year career at Ohio State that culminated in sharing Player of the Year honors with John Wall as a junior, which jettisoned him to the No. 2 pick in the 2010 NBA Draft. He never quite lived up to the hype — he was averaged 17.4 points, 6.0 boards and 3.7 assists when he was traded from a tanking Philly team to come off the bench for the Pacers in 2014 — but has posted 10.2 points, 4.8 boards and 3.5 assists in an eight-year (and counting) career that will earn him at least $98 million.

13. PATRICK PATTERSON (17)

Patterson has only averaged double-figures once in his eight-year career, but he’s developed into a pretty decent veteran big man, and still a fairly-useful piece. He’s never been much more than a borderline starter in the NBA, but he’s 6-foot-9 and he can still rebound and made threes.

14. O.J. MAYO (4)

The hype that Mayo had coming out of high school was on another level, and his “recruitment” to USC is the stuff of legends. He entered the NBA in 2008 with Memphis, averaging 18.5 points as a rookie, but it’s been all downhill from there. He’s never mae an all-star team, he’s never bettered his rookie season numbers and he’s been out of the NBA since 2016 following a positive drug test.

15. JERRYD BAYLESS (13)

After one season at Arizona where he 19.7 points, Bayless has built himself a 10-year NBA career out of being an offensive sparkplug off the bench. Currently, he’s a part-time starter and one of the first guards off the bench for the 76ers.

16. J.J. HICKSON (10)

Hickson was actually a pretty productive player in the league for a few years, topping out during the 2012-13 season, when he averaged 12.7 points and 10.4 boards for Portland. It’s been all downhill since then, as he was out of the NBA by 2016, spent two years in China and, just this summer, was arrested for attempted armed robbery in Georgia.

17. E’TWUAN MOORE (35)

It took awhile for Moore to get where he is, but after spending the first five years of his career bouncing around the league, he’s found a home in New Orleans. This past season, he started 80 games for the Pelicans, averaging 12.5 points and 2.3 assists while shooting 42.3 percent from three.

18. JUSTIN HOLIDAY (83)

One of three Holiday brothers currently in the NBA, Justin had just nine games in one season of NBA player under his belt in 2014 when, at 25 years old, he signed with the Warriors. But in the last four years, he’s carved out a career for himself, highlighted by this past year, where he started 72 games for the Bulls while averaging 12.2 points.

19. NICK CALATHES (14)

Calathes has played just two seasons in the NBA, but he’s a dual-citizen of Greece and has had a decorated, successful and profitable career playing for the Greek club Panathinaikos.

20. ANTHONY RANDOLPH (12)

Like Calathes, Randolph has turned what could be viewed as an NBA failure into a tremendous amount of success overseas. He played in the league for five years, but has been doing nothing but winning trophies over in Europe. He won Eurobasket playing alongside Luke Doncic and Goran Dragic with the Slovenian national team, and cut down the nets with Real Madrid in the Euroleague this past spring.

21. KYLE SINGLER (5)

Singler was an all-american and a national champion with the Duke Blue Devils before getting drafted by the Pistons in the second round in 2011. He lasted three years with Detroit as a starter before heading to Oklahoma City, where he is still on the roster, playing minimal minutes.

22. MIKE SCOTT (115)

Like Singler, Scott didn’t play an NBA game until the 2012-13 season, but he carved out a career for himself as a bench player for the Atlanta Hawks for five seasons. Last year, he played 76 games and averaged 8.8 points off the bench for the Wizards.

23. KOSTA KOUFOS (16)

Believe it or not, Koufos is still in the NBA. The former one-and-done center from Ohio State has played for five teams in his ten-year career, but he’s heading into his fourth season in Sacramento, where he’s averaged 73 games the last three years, starting 89 of them.

24. JON LEUER (82)

The former all-american at Wisconsin has managed to put together a seven-year career in the NBA. He played just eight games last season, but in 2016-17, he averaged a career-high 10.2 points for the Detroit Pistons.

25. NOLAN SMITH (39)

Smith shared National Player of the year awards with Jimmer Fredette and Kemba Walker in 2011, a year after he won a national title with Duke, and went on to get drafted in the first round by the Portland Trailblazers before his career was sent off the rails by a torn ACL.

FIVE NOTABLES THAT DIDN’T MAKE THE TOP 25

BILL WALKER (7)

Walker was a high school teammate of O.J. Mayo who ended up enrolling at Kansas State in middle of the 2006-07 season after it was determined that he had already used up his high school eligibility. He would tear an ACL for the second time that season before averaging 16.8 points as a sophomore alongside Michael Beasley. He played parts of five seasons in the NBA, and is currently going by the name Henry Walker while playing in the Phillipines.

DONTE GREENE (9)

Greene played just one season at Syracuse before heading to the NBA, where he was a late first round pick. He lasted four years in the league and has since bounced around the world, playing everywhere from Saudi Arabia to China to Lebanon to the Dominican Republic.

JONNY FLYNN (22)

Best-known as “the guy taken before Stephen Curry”, the former No. 6 pick in the NBA draft played just three seasons in the NBA before heading overseas. Best I can tell, he’s been out of basketball since 2014.

NORRIS COLE (UR)

Cole was a star at Cleveland State before getting picked in the first round of the 2011 NBA Draft. He played for three years with LeBron and Dwyane Wade in Miami, a valuable role player that earned himself a pair of rings. His best seasons came in 2015-16, when he averaged 10.6 points and 3.7 assists with the Pelicans.

JACOB PULLEN (UR)

One of my favorite players in the college rankings since I started doing this, so I’m throwing his name in here. He was on a two-way contract with the 76ers last year.

Dream season ends for FAU in 72-71 Final Four loss to Aztecs

Associated PressApr 1, 2023, 10:25 PM EDT

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HOUSTON (AP) FAU’s debut at the Final Four ended in the most excruciating manner imaginable.

The Owls led for the last 27 minutes, 25 seconds of Saturday night’s game against San Diego State, only to watch their dream of a title become a nightmare when Lamont Butler’s jumper went through the net at the buzzer to give the Aztecs a 72-71 victory.

The Owls made school history by getting here, only to walk off the court in shock as the Aztecs bounced around in celebration.

“I was in shock when the buzzer went off,” said FAU’s Nick Boyd.

Florida Atlantic’s players smiled and many danced on the bench during a second half in which it appeared they’d move within one win of a title no one could have seen coming.

Instead they ended up with a loss that nobody will ever forget.

Butler’s shot goes into the March Madness annals, alongside Jalen Suggs’ long-range buzzer-beater for Gonzaga two years ago in the national semifinal, and even something that happened on this very floor the last time the Final Four was Houston in 2016: Kris Jenkins’ buzzer-beater to win the title for Villanova.

Which means FAU will be remembered alongside UCLA and North Carolina as victims of some of the most crushing last-second losses this tournament has seen.

For so long, it didn’t look like it would go that way.

Jalen Gaffney made a 3-pointer to put the Owls ahead 26-24 with 7:25 left in the first half. FAU didn’t trail again until the buzzer.

The Owls were up by 9 with 11 minutes to go after testing San Diego State’s vaunted defense like no one had in this tournament before the Aztecs started chipping away at the lead.

The Aztecs got within 2 for the first time with about 10 minutes to go and tied it with 4 1/2 minutes left.

Giancarlo Rosado put the Owls back on top with a fadeaway jumper seconds later, but they didn’t make another field goal until Alijah Martin’s layup made it 71-68 with 45 seconds left.

Jaedon LeDee hit a jumper to cut FAU’s lead to 1 with 36 seconds left.

Johnell Davis missed a layup with nine seconds left that would have padded the lead.

Nathan Mensah grabbed a rebound before Butler’s jumper swished through the net at the buzzer to end this Cinderella’s dream season.

—

AP March Madness coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness and bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://twitter.com/AP-Top25

Clark, Iowa end perfect South Carolina season in Final Four

Associated PressApr 1, 2023, 12:29 AM EDT

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

DALLAS – Caitlin Clark overwhelmed the reigning champions with another sensational game, scoring 41 points to help Iowa spoil South Carolina’s perfect season with a 77-73 victory on Friday night in the Final Four.

The spectacular junior guard set a record for the highest-scoring semifinal game and became the first women’s player to post back-to-back 40-point games in the NCAA Tournament. She now has the Hawkeyes in a spot they’ve never been in before – one victory away from a national championship.

They’ll have to beat another SEC team to do that as Iowa (31-6) will face LSU in the title game on Sunday afternoon. The Tigers beat Virginia Tech in the other national semifinal.

It’s the Tigers’ first appearance in the title game as Kim Mulkey became the second coach to take two different teams to the championship game.

Thanks to the spectacular play of Clark and the historic year by South Carolina, this was one of the most talked about and highly anticipated matchups in women’s Final Four history,

The game lived up to the hype surrounding it- the best player vs. the best team – much to the delight of the sellout crowd of over 19,000 fans.

Coach Dawn Staley and South Carolina (36-1) had won 42 in a row, including last year’s championship game.

This was Iowa’s first appearance in the Final Four in 30 years. The last time the Hawkeyes advanced this far was 1993 and C. Vivian Stringer was the coach of that team that lost to Ohio State in overtime.

Clark wowed the crowd that included Harper Stribe, a young fan of the team who has been battling cancer. She was featured in a surprise video that informed the Hawkeyes’ star that she was the AP Player of the Year.

Trailing 59-55 entering the fourth quarter, South Carolina scored the first five points to take the lead. Clark answered right back with two deep 3-pointers and an assist to Monika Czinano to give the Hawkeyes a 67-62 lead.

South Carolina got within 69-68 on Raven Johnson’s 3-pointer before Clark got a steal for a layup with 3:32 left. Neither team scored again until star Aliyah Boston was fouled with 1:37 left. She made the second of two free throws.

Clark then scored another layup on the other end out of a timeout to make it a four-point game. After a layup by Zia Cooke made it a two-point game with 58 seconds left, the Hawkeyes ran the clock down with McKenna Warnock grabbing a huge offensive rebound off a Clark miss with 18 seconds remaining.

Clark hit two free throws after South Carolina fouled her with 13.5 seconds left. They were her 38th and 39th point, moving her past Nneka Ogwumike for the most points scored in a Final Four semifinal game.

After a putback by Johnson with 9.9 seconds left got the Gamecocks within 75-73, Clark sealed the game with two more free throws.

As the final seconds went off the clock Clark threw the ball high in the air and galloped around the court.

The loss ended a spectacular season for the defending champion Gamecocks, who were trying to become the 10th team to go through a season unbeaten.

Cooke led the Gamecocks with 24 points. Slowed by foul trouble, Boston had just eight points and 10 rebounds as the Hawkeyes packed the paint, daring South Carolina to shoot from the outside.

The Gamecocks finished 4-for-20 from behind the 3-point line and couldn’t take advantage of their 49-25 advantage on the boards that included 26 offensive rebounds.

Mulkey, LSU women rally in Final Four, reach first title game

Associated PressMar 31, 2023, 11:51 PM EDT

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

DALLAS – Kim Mulkey is back in another national championship game, this time taking the flagship university from her home state there for the first time.

It took LSU only two seasons to get there with the feisty and flamboyantly dressed coach, and a big comeback in the national semifinal game that was quite an undercard Friday night.

Alexis Morris scored 27 points and had two of her misses in the fourth quarter turned into putback baskets by Angel Reese in a big run as LSU rallied to beat top-seeded Virginia Tech 79-72 in the first semifinal game.

“I’m never satisfied. I’m super-excited that we won, but I’m hungry,” said Morris, who jumped on a courtside table and fired up LSU fans after the game. “Like, I’m greedy. I want to win it all so I can complete the story.”

Reese finished with 24 points and 12 rebounds for LSU (33-2), which will play in the national title game Sunday against the winner of the highly anticipated matchup between Southeastern Conference foe South Carolina or Iowa in the other semifinal.

“It’s like a dream. It still hasn’t hit me that I’m at the Final Four,” said Reese, the transfer from Maryland who carries the nickname, ”Bayou Barbie.” “I’m just not even believing this right now. It’s crazy how much my life has changed in one year.”

Mulkey – in a carnation pink top this time – won three national titles in four Final Four appearances over her 21 seasons at Baylor. She is only the second coach to take two different teams to the national championship game. The other is C. Vivian Stringer, who did it with Cheyney in the inaugural 1982 women’s tournament and Rutgers in 2007.

“I came home for lots of reasons,” Mulkey said. “One, to some day hang a championship banner in the PMAC (Pete Maravich Assembly Center). Never, ever do you think you’re going to do something like this in two years.”

LSU made five national semifinal games in a row from 2004-08 – the only times the Tigers had made it this far. They lost each of those years.

The Tigers had to dig deep for this one, with neither team backing down.

Trailing 59-50 after three quarters, LSU went ahead with a 15-0 run over a five-minute span. The Tigers led for the first time since late in the first half when Falu’jae Johnson had a steal and drove for a layup to make it 64-62.

Reese had six points in that game-turning spurt, including a basket after Morris’ attempted 3-pointer clanked off the front rim. Reese had a second-effort follow of her own miss after rebounding another shot by Morris.

Elizabeth Kitley, the 6-foot-6 senior, had 18 points and 12 rebounds for Virginia Tech (31-5), the Atlantic Coast Conference champion that was in the Final Four for the first time. Georgia Amoore and Kayana Traylor each had 17 points, while Cayla King had 14.

Amoore set a record for the most 3-pointers in a single NCAA Tournament with 24, though she had a tough night shooting – 4 of 17 overall, including 4 of 15 from beyond the arc. She passed Kia Nurse’s record 22 set in the 2017 tourney for UConn, which lost in the national semifinals on the same court. Arizona’s Aari McDonald had 22 in six NCAA tourney games two years ago.

The big run for LSU came right after Amoore made her last 3-pointer with 7:52 left for a 62-57 lead. The Hokies didn’t make another basket until King’s 3 with 1:19 left.

“I think we had a few crucial turnovers as well as missed box-outs where they scored on second-chance opportunities,” Traylor said. “I think that’s just what it came down to really.”

Morris had opened the fourth quarter with a 3-pointer for LSU, then had a driving layup before Reese had a layup after a steal by Johnson. That quick 7-0 run prompted a timeout by Hokies coach Kenny Brooks.

“They hit a couple of shots, gave them a little bit of momentum. They hit a 3 right off the bat … kind of changed the momentum,” Brooks said. “They were aggressive in the passing lanes. But they also were a little bit more aggressive down low.”

Virginia Tech had ended the first half with its own 11-0 run to lead for the first time, at 34-32 on Traylor’s driving layup with 53 seconds left.

But it was the Tigers who led for 17:55 of the first half with the Hokies getting off to a slow start shooting – they missed eight of their first nine shots – that an LSU cheerleader had an assist even before they officially had a shot.

King was charged with a turnover on a ball that hit the rim and bounced over the top of the backboard and got stuck there. With encouragement from officials and others at that end, a male cheerleader lifted up a female cheerleader, who knocked the ball down.

Gradey Dick to leave Kansas for NBA draft after one season

Associated PressMar 31, 2023, 11:46 PM EDT

Amy Kontras-USA TODAY Sports

LAWRENCE, Kan. – Kansas sharpshooter Gradey Dick is entering the NBA draft after one season with the Jayhawks.

The 6-foot-8 guard announced his decision in a social media post Friday.

Dick started all 36 games for the Jayhawks and averaged 14.1 points while shooting better than 40% from 3-point range. He made 83 3-pointers, a program record for a freshman.

Kansas lost to Arkansas in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, with Dick scoring just seven points in his finale.

Marquette’s Shaka Smart voted men’s AP coach of the year

Associated PressMar 31, 2023, 4:06 PM EDT

Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Shaka Smart has packed an entire career’s worth of experiences into 14 years as a college head coach. He led VCU to an improbable Final Four as a 30-something wunderkind in 2011, guided mighty Texas to a Big 12 Tournament title during six otherwise tepid years in Austin, and now has turned Marquette into a Big East beast.

It’s sometimes easy to forget he’s still just 45 years old.

Yet his work with the Golden Eagles this season might have been his best: Picked ninth in the 11-team league by its coaches, they won the regular-season title going away, then beat Xavier to win their first Big East Tournament championship.

That earned Smart the AP coach of the year award Friday. He garnered 24 of 58 votes from a national media panel to edge Kansas State’s Jerome Tang, who received 13 votes before guiding the Wildcats to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament, and Houston’s Kelvin Sampson, who earned 10 before taking the Cougars to the Sweet 16.

Voting opened after the regular season and closed at the start of the NCAA Tournament, where the No. 2 seed Golden Eagles were knocked out in the second round by Michigan State and Smart’s longtime mentor, Tom Izzo.

“I’m very grateful to win this award,” said Smart, the second Marquette coach to take it home after Hall of Famer Al McGuire in 1971, “but obviously it always comes back to the guys you have on your team.

“Early on,” Smart said, “we had a real sense the guys had genuine care and concern for one another, and we had a very good foundation for relationships that we could continue to build on. And over the course of seasons, you go through so many different experiences as a team. And those experiences either bring you closer together or further apart. Our guys did a great job, even through adverse experiences, even through challenges, becoming closer together.”

It’s hardly surprising such cohesion is what Smart would choose to remember most from a most memorable season.

The native of Madison, Wisconsin, who holds a master’s degree in social science from California University of Pennsylvania, long ago earned a reputation for building close bonds with players and a tight-knit camaraderie within his teams.

No matter how high or low the Golden Eagles were this season, those traits carried them through.

“Everything that we go through, whether it be the retreat that we went on before the season, all the workouts in the summer, he’s preaching his culture,” said Tyler Kolek, a third-team All-American. “And he’s showing his leadership every single day, and just trying to impart that on us, and kind of put it in our DNA. Because it’s definitely in his DNA.”

That’s reflected in the way Smart, who accepted the Marquette job two years ago after an often bumpy tenure at Texas, has rebuilt the Golden Eagles program after it had begun to languish under Steve Wojciechowski.

Sure, Smart landed his share of transfers – Kolek among them – in an era in which the portal has become so prevalent. But he largely built a team that finished 29-7 this season around high school recruits, eschewing a quick fix in the hopes of long-term stability. Among those prospects were Kam Jones, their leading scorer, and do-everything forward David Joplin.

“He teaches us lots of things about the importance of each other,” Joplin said. “He lets us know, time and time again, that we can’t do anything without each other, but together we can do anything.”

That sounds like a decidedly old-school approach to building a college basketball program.

One embraced by a still-youthful head coach.

“I think being a head coach has never been more complicated, never been more nuanced, and never more all-encompassing,” Smart told the AP in a wide-ranging interview last week. “Does that mean it’s harder? You could say that.

“What makes your job less hard,” Smart said, “is having a captive audience in your players, and guys that truly understand and own what goes into winning, and that’s what we had this past year. But those things just don’t happen. There are a lot of steps that have to occur on the part of a lot of people, not just the coach, to get to where you have a winning environment.”